Coal Aston paths

Today has had lovely spring weather, a far cry from the months of rain that characterised the start of 2026. I took the opportunity to complete another small section of my rights of way project, focussing on some paths to the northeast of Coal Aston that I'd missed in previous visits.

A region around Birlehay is now completed

It's a mixed area, mostly arable farm land but interleaved with small woodlands, villages and paddocks. The fields around here accumulate water in wet weather and don't seem to drain at all well, so paths are often wet and muddy. Paths across fields south of Povey Farm seem to be in the process of being lost. There were historical arguments that walkers should walk around crops but nowadays the law is quite clear that cross-field paths should be cleared. In some places even the stiles are lost or the hedgerow unbroken. A wet-weather task might be write to the local highways authority.

Trees in a hedge between two recently-sown arable fields

The terrain could be described as 'rolling countryside', so there aren't any significant hills but even on today's fairly short run there was nearly 500m of ascent. Much of that was slippery mud, so not an easy circuit.

I'm currently troubled by plantar fasciitis in my left foot and the physio has speculated that it may be aggravated running in mud, where forces can be higher and unpredictable than on a well-made path. My habitually tight calf muscles probably don't help either. Some online advice promotes stretching and roller/ball exercises and like many runners I'm aware these can benefit mobility but tend to neglect them.

Coal Aston towards Unstone

In my ongoing quest to cover the local paths I drove to Coal Aston to help me reach further into North East Derbyshire. This is an area with many intersecting paths so the task is larger than for some parts of 'my map'. The majority of the land is agricultural, a combination of dairy farming and small arable fields. Some smaller plots are paddocks for horses, recreational riding looks to be popular around here.

Although there were a few dry weeks in late May, recently there has been a little rain so the hedgerows and field boundaries have been flourishing.

North East Derbyshire

In my ongoing exercise to walk all of the rights of way on my local OS 1:25000 map, I headed to Unstone to walk in the South East corner of the map. I designed a marathon-length circular route to include a range of terrain and opportunities to take a break at a village pub or cafe.

A few kilometres at the map's edge were along the Chesterfield canal path, or Cuckoo way, which I've written about previously. Turning away from the canal I found that bridges over the river had been dismantled and so my intended path, and an alternative, were not possible.

 

This part of Derbyshire is quite different to the Peak District. Much of it is post-industrial, some agricultural and a fair proportion is suburban. The borders between the zones sometimes have surprises, for instance an area of HGV storage in a derelict farm.

Some of my route was along the Sheffield Country Walk which I'd like to complete as a single route one day. It included some very pleasant woodland that took me to the village of Ford where I was able to buy a long overdue coffee.

Every small town used to have a garage with a petrol station and the remnants of one were still in place in New Whittington.

Due to route changes on the go, I didn't quite cover the intended mileage but I was happy with 42km in 6:34hrs. Incidentally, the route included almost 900m of ascent as it literally went uphill and down dale.